


Hedging Your Bets

by Rose_of_Pollux



Series: Inktober for Writers 2017 [8]
Category: The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-08
Updated: 2017-10-08
Packaged: 2019-01-10 19:37:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12306273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rose_of_Pollux/pseuds/Rose_of_Pollux
Summary: The boys, a THRUSHie, and a hedge maze.  What more is there to say?





	Hedging Your Bets

**Author's Note:**

> For Prompt 8 of Inktober for Writers: Impasse

Napoleon and Illya ran up and down the corridor of the hedge maze, searching for where the THRUSHie they’d been chasing had disappeared to.

“He’s gone!” Illya fumed, seeing no one around. “What would possess him to run into a maze!? He’d be just as lost as us!”

“Well, you’ve got to admit… it worked…” Napoleon sighed. “Even if he’s lost, if he’s on the wrong side of the hedges, he’s still out of our reach. Trying to find the right path in and out of the maze is difficult as it is; the chances of trying to find our quarry in here are slim, at best.”

“Then I will fill this maze with tranquilizers,” Illya declared, losing his patience. “Perhaps one of them will hit him.”

“Hold your fire,” Napoleon advised. “In the event we do catch up with him, you may need those tranquilizers.”

“Fine,” Illya grumbled. “I will use them on the THRUSHie, and then use them on whoever came up with the inane idea of creating hedge mazes! First the Partridges’ maze, and now this… They are nothing but misery and trouble!”

“…Now I wonder it this one will have traps like the Partridges’…” Napoleon mused.

“…That’s all we need,” Illya grumped.

The two of them heard a muffled curse coming from the other side of the hedge, and exchanged a glance.

“You haven’t taken up ventriloquism, have you?” Napoleon whispered.

Illya gave him an exasperated look.

“Didn’t think so. Well, that means he’s in the path parallel to this one.”

“And there is no opening to that parallel path,” Illya whispered back. “We have reached an impasse!”

“Not quite,” Napoleon whispered, giving him a wink. “Follow me.”

Napoleon charged right through the wall of the hedge maze; his momentum took him to the other side and to the other path, and the shock of Napoleon’s sudden appearance caused the THRUSHie to stop in his tracks, allowing Napoleon to take aim and fire a tranquilizer at him.

Illya now followed Napoleon through the hole in the hedge, looking utterly exasperated as Napoleon placed the handcuffs on the THRUSHie.

“There could have been traps!” Illya chided

“I checked that part of the wall before I charged through it; I wasn’t that stupid,” Napoleon said, grinning.

“You were hardly innovative, either!” Illya bickered. “I could have thought of that!”

“But, seeing as though I thought of it first, I would say that I was innovative enough!” Napoleon said, proudly.

“Oh?” Illya countered. “Then let’s see you be innovative and find a way out of this maze now. …Or do you think that your ability to charge through each and every wall of the maze may not be practical after all?”

Napoleon blinked.

“…How many walls do you think this maze would have?”

“A lot,” Illya said.

“Well, Tovarisch, grab your spool of yarn; we’re getting out of here the Theseus way!”

Illya shook his head, but used the yarn anyway as they searched for a way out. He could take comfort knowing that, with Napoleon, it wouldn’t be a dull time.


End file.
